Chapter Forty-Two

Chapter Forty-Two

“Mademoiselle Dumont, I am sorry, but only your name and an accompanying maid are on my list.” The sentry at the big iron gate at the top of the mountain looked at her unhappily through the Daimler’s rear window, which Genevieve had rolled down at the first hint of trouble. In the driver’s seat, Lutz, already frazzled at being dragooned into transporting five passengers when he had expected two, had been making apologetic sounds at the guard leaning into the car. They’d already had to pass through an armed checkpoint at the base of the mountain, and military vehicles packed with soldiers had lined the road. But this sergeant in his heavy greatcoat and fur-lined hat that was buckled tight beneath his chin to protect him against the cold came armed with something else: a list fastened to a clipboard.

And Max, Otto and Emmy weren’t on it.

“If I’m to put on a show for Herr Obergruppenführer Wagner and his guests, I must have what I need,” Genevieve said. Her breath created small puffs of vapor in the pine-scented air. The temperature in the town below had been chilly. Up on this snowy mountainside high in the clouds, it felt as if winter had no intention of going away. “Monsieur Bonet is my accompanist, Monsieur Cordier is my piano tuner and sound engineer, and Madame Chastain—” the name on Emmy’s forged travel documents “—is my duet partner. I would not have paid for their travel from Paris to Stuttgart if I did not need them.” She paused and did her best to look affronted. “Indeed, if I cannot have them, I cannot perform. Corporal Lutz, please turn around and take me back to town.”

“Mademoiselle Dumont—” Eyes wide with alarm, Lutz skewed around in his seat to look at her. Berthe, beside him, all bundled up in her black coat and scarf with her hands folded on her lap, stared stolidly straight ahead. Beside her, Otto in his scruffy Russian hat looked old and shrunken and anxious. “I cannot! Herr Obergruppenführer Wagner will be most upset. He—”

“Turn around,” Genevieve interrupted firmly. “I will not do a show that is not up to my standards. I will go back to Paris.”

“No, no, that won’t be necessary,” the sentry said. Having taken the measure of the two in the front seat, he looked at Max and Emmy, who sat with Genevieve in the back, then withdrew from the window. “Go ahead,” he said to Lutz, and waved to whoever was in charge of opening the gates.

As the Daimler passed through to the final sweep of road leading up to Eber Schloss, Genevieve glanced back to find him busily jotting down a note on his list.

Big dirty drifts of snow lay on either side of the narrow road, and more snow, deep and pristine, covered the steep slopes leading up to the castle. When the car went around the last in a series of hairpin turns, Genevieve had a breathtaking view of the valley below. Spread out over a succession of rolling hills and deep valleys, tucked around the curling blue ribbon that was the Neckar River, it was covered in a light dusting of snow that made it look like it had been sprinkled with powdered sugar. The town itself boasted a beautiful Flemish Gothic town hall and a baroque palace that had once belonged to the House of Württemberg. In addition, it featured a variety of seventeenth-, eighteenth-and nineteenth-century architecture as well as many parks and churches. On the outskirts of the city, the ugliness of what looked like an army barracks spread out over a flat plain. It was actually a labor camp for the conscripts brought in to work the factories for which Stuttgart was known. Those same factories had caused the city to become a target for numerous Allied bombing raids. Seen from her vantage point high on the mountain, Stuttgart looked like a giant had stomped through, wantonly breaking buildings and trees, leaving craterous footprints in the streets and on the ground.

On what was almost the opposite side of the mountain, she caught the briefest of glimpses of a pair of steel cables, appearing spider-silk thin at this distance, glinting silver against the leaden sky. Suspended high above vertical cliffs and deep ravines, those cables and the cable cars they ordinarily carried represented the only other means of accessing Eber Schloss. Rising from the valley below up an even steeper section of mountain than the one the Daimler was climbing, the cable cars had been stopped as a security measure while the VIPs were visiting the schloss.

Genevieve thought she probably wouldn’t even have spotted the cables if she hadn’t been looking for them. But she was looking for them because the cable cars had been tapped as their only way out.

Assuming they survived long enough to attempt escaping by them.

Just thinking about it made her heart pound, so she tried not to.

They turned a final corner. Sweeping vistas of pine trees and snowdrifts and low-floating wisps of gray clouds blocked the cables from her sight. Instead she was treated to the full glory of Eber Schloss as the Daimler arrived with a swish of tires at its front door.

Rising from a plateau that had been blasted out of the top of the mountain, Eber Schloss was a fairy-tale castle à la the Brothers Grimm. Built of dark gray limestone that sparkled faintly even on this overcast day, its turrets were tall enough to disappear into the clouds. Crenellated battlements, narrow mullioned windows and an enormous oaken front door blackened by time added to the impression it gave of an ancient and impregnable fortress.

Genevieve’s attention was distracted as one of the soldiers on guard hurried up to open her door for her—and Wagner came running down the castle’s wide front steps.

Her heart slammed into double time even as she allowed the soldier to hand her out of the car. Shivering a little at the cold despite her trim wool coat, she assumed her best smile and held out both hands to him.

“Claus!”

He beamed, dimples forming deep creases on either side of his mouth, his eyes sparkling blue as he came toward her.

“Genevieve.” He caught her hands, carried them to his mouth one at a time and kissed them. Then he leaned in to press a warm and possessive kiss to her cheek. “Welcome to Eber Schloss. I am honored to have you here at my poor home.”

“Your ‘poor home,’ as you call it, is breathtakingly beautiful,” Genevieve said as he continued to hold her hands. “I am surprised you can ever bring yourself to leave.”

“Sometimes it is a wrench, I will admit, but I must go where duty calls.” He glanced past her, and his smile faltered. A barely perceptible tightening of the skin around his eyes announced his awareness of Max’s presence even before he continued with “Ah, Monsieur Bonet. I am of course honored to have you, too.”

“It is I who am honored to be here,” Max said. A glance told Genevieve that he was looking doubtfully at the long flight of stairs while leaning heavily on his stick. He was, she reflected, very, very good at what he did. While she hoped, no, prayed, that her performance would be good enough, certainly he was a better actor than she was. Her nerves were already frayed.

“Max will be playing the piano for me.” Genevieve’s tone was gay as she freed her hands, only to tuck one into Wagner’s arm. She waved a vague hand at the others. “Emmy and I are to duet, Otto is to tune what I am sure is your dreadfully out-of-tune instrument, and Berthe, as always, takes care of me. I have such a show prepared for you! You will be pleased, I promise.”

“I am looking forward to it more than I can say. Please, come inside where it’s warm.” He was already starting up the steps with her when his attention was caught by—something. Genevieve followed the direction of his gaze to find that he was looking at the admittedly truly impressive amount of luggage Lutz was lifting from the trunk.

Her heart started thumping so loudly she was afraid he might hear it. If he were to order a search of her bags...

“You will be thinking that I’ve come to stay a month!” Squeezing his arm, she laughed. “Most everything in there is for the show, of course. I have costumes, and cosmetics and props—just you wait. Because I wanted this performance to be special. Is there someplace where they can be taken? A bedroom, perhaps...somewhere quiet where I can also rest between the rehearsal and the performance?”

“Of course. I’ve already ordered that overnight rooms be prepared for you and your maid, although of course more can be found to accommodate the rest of your party. Anything else you need, you have only to ask.” He looked at Lutz, raised his voice. “Have Mademoiselle Dumont’s things brought in. Schneider—he is my butler,” he added in an aside to Genevieve before raising his voice to call to Lutz again, “will tell you where to put them. Tell him to find rooms for the other guests, as well.”

As they continued on up the stairs, Wagner’s entire focus was on her, just as she’d intended for it to be.

Her luggage did indeed contain costumes, cosmetics and props. They were packed in alongside enough sticks of C-4 explosive to, as Otto put it, bring the whole bloody mountain down.

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